The Ministry claims the allegation is a conspiracy by "Turkey and its partners", with the aim of distorting Syria's image and position in the international community. It said that it is well-known that Scud missiles are strategic long-range missiles and are not used when facing "armed terrorist gangs".

First Lieutenant Aaraba Idriss said he is still in contact with officers and members of his former Battalion 57, part of Brigade 155. He said they had fired five Scud missiles from their location in Nasiriyeh on the highway between Damascus and the central Syrian city of Homs.

Idriss, who now heads the Hassan Battalion of the insurgent Free Syrian Army, said "the missiles were fired northwest at 10:45 (0845 GMT), 12:30, 13:50, 15:15 and 17:10" and may have struck in Aleppo Province or Idlib Province.

Idriss said the "Golan-1" missiles were either Russian-made or Russian-modified" and have a range of up to 300 kilometres (186 miles).

AFP writes that a soldier, who defected on Tuesday morning, corroborated the report.

2153 GMT: At the end of the day, the two Western journalists who remain injured in the Baba Amr district of Homs have not been rescued. However, the Red Cross did manage to remove three injured Syrians from the besieged district:

A negotiator in the evacuation efforts said they fell through "at the last minute after ambulances had entered Baba Amr" but declined to specify if regime forces or rebels had blocked the operation.

2146 GMT: The on-line magazine Mother Jones has received a document that they say was leaked from someone inside the Syrian government and contains more than 700 pages of names of activists who have been placed on a government "kill list." A series of experts whom Mother Jones shared the document with believe it is genuine:

Joshua Landis, a scholar on Syria who has consulted for the State Department and other US government agencies, said he thinks the document merges the records of several Syrian intelligence agencies in order to better coordinate the crackdown. "This is what a secret service does," he said. Actions allegedly taken by individuals in the document—such as setting up a roadblock near Homs or issuing instructions about how to attack a Syrian military outpost—are "the kind of thing that people get whacked for all the time, or at least tortured for."